Galapagos Islands - Day 5 - Isabela - Elizabeth Bay

No shoes necessary this afternoon. It's a smooth paddle around the mangroves.

And this outing provided first sighting of the little dudes that I'd been especially spastic about wanting to see...the Galapagos Penguin--the world's only tropical penguin. How can these guys not make you smile? That guy below on the left performed the most ungraceful "dive" into the water you could possibly imagine. It was like a face-forward trust fall/belly-flop. Absolutely hysterical.

This sea turtle is a migrant from Indonesia...

It was at this time, that the battery on my camera started to die. And due to an extremely unfortunate event involving a wet bathing suit and the charger, the camera was soon to enter retirement for the rest of this trip.

Of course this sputtered right when our dinghy pulled up at one of the most incredible sights of the trip--a small islet that was quite the advertisement for the Galapagos. Side by side there were: blue footed boobies, nazca boobies, Galapagos penguins, flightless cormorants, marine iguanas, sally lightfoot crabs, and the most attention starved sea lions you could imagine.

Our guide Juan was equally delighted as he reminded us this was something that very few tourists to the islands ever get to see.